Diversity by Nacho Carbonell

Product design

Inside the spectacular Palazzo Ferre, Nacho Carbonell unveiled his single largest body of new work: twenty prototypes - iterations of a chair/table- covered in materials such as hair, glass shards, branches and gravel.

By Editor Design.nl / 15-04-2010

Every single visitor couldn't help but be awed by the solo presentation of Nacho Carbonell entitled 'Diversity'. Hosted by Rossana Orlandi, the one-off exhibition was housed in the opulent surrounds of the exhibition space/hall inside Palazzo Ferre, a space normally used exclusively for Gianfranco Ferre’s fashion shows.

Carbonell debuted twenty new 'Diversity' pieces which are iterations of the same form – a slender-legged chair attached to a narrow, covered desk – covered in different materials. One is clad in broken shards of wine bottles, another in gravel, a chair covered in sections of hair can be 'groomed' while a spectacular chair comes to life covered in a mass of thin, curved branches. At one point during the opening, Carbonell started to hammer away at a ceramic-covered chair. "I only brought a small hammer thinking it wouldn't be so difficult to break the chair. It was actually pretty hard work," Carbonell explains. Watch the video here of the performance on Designguide.tv. A towering eight-metre made from hundreds of layers of torn colored paper provided a dramatic backdrop to the exhibition.

Also on show were variations of Carbonell's ceramic Hot Kettle vase colored with various layers of pigment textures.

It is the first time that Spazio Rossana Orlandi hosts such a large-scale exhibition outside their usual gallery space.

Main image and images 1-2, photography: Tatiana Uzlova
Images 3-9: Matylda Krzykowski
Video courtesy of Designguide.tv